


changes

by johnnyfucksup



Category: That '70s Show
Genre: Best Friends, Coming Out, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, M/M, Making Out, friends - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 11:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16660195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnnyfucksup/pseuds/johnnyfucksup
Summary: Eric Forman realizes some changes. And Hyde is there to validate them.





	changes

**Author's Note:**

> hello friends, i've realized just now..  
> there is little to no fanfiction out here for this fandom.   
> so here i am, your hero in the little fandoms, bear with me

When Eric Forman was fourteen, he noticed something.

He noticed many things, actually.

When he turned fourteen, his friends started to behave strangely. They started to talk about girls, and girls’ bodies, they started to swear and say dirty things that Eric didn’t even understand. They started to behave entirely differently, talk strangely, make jokes that weren’t funny, talked about females like objects. 

Everyone started to change. Eric didn’t. 

Eric had never been interested in girls, or in kissing, or in touching. He had always been in love with Donna, but he had never had the urge to do the kinds of things his friends talked about. He couldn’t understand why everyone was acting like they did. 

Everything changed when Eric just turned fourteen. But he himself didn’t. 

xx.

Eric, still fifteen, now started to feel changes, too.

He started to feel feelings he never thought he would be able to feel. He started to comprehend the word attraction, the word attractiveness. He found himself longing and pining, he started to feel how all his friends had felt not long ago. 

But he didn’t long after Donna, like everyone had expected him to do. He didn’t even long after _girls_. And, as he knew since he was thinking, that in this period of time, in the 70s, boys didn’t like boys. They just didn’t. They couldn’t. And girls couldn’t kiss girls.

Eric was fifteen when he realized his feelings for other boys, that his dreams weren’t just dreams, and that his fantasies weren’t just out of teenager-typical curiousness. 

And in that time, so hard and brutal, he found comfort in drugs. 

He started to smoke weed, to drink alcohol, not only at the weekends. He drank and smoked, and smoked and drank, as much as he could. 

And in that time, so full of self-destroying and the love of hating, Hyde stood by his side. 

Oh, Hyde. 

He never left Eric’s side, stayed with him when he was crying and breaking and screaming, stood by his side, got wasted with him. Steven Hyde was the only person to understand why Eric couldn’t and wouldn’t understand. 

They often talked, when they were alone in their basement, when their friends weren’t there with them, they talked for hours and the whole night and sometimes they didn’t even stop when the sun rose and shone through the dirty window. 

Firstly, they were hesitant with their talking, they didn’t surpass the surface of emotional discomfort, they only talked bla bla, joked around, gossiped. And somewhen, sometime, Eric couldn’t even remember if it had been a night or a day or if it was in the basement or in his room, they crossed the line. 

They crossed this one special line of emotion, they went deep, they dived into each other’s souls, and they stayed there. 

Eric began to open himself to Hyde, in a way he never thought he could, he let out his vomit of thoughts and emotions, he told Hyde everything he didn’t even dare to think. He spat out his angst, his fear, his disgust with the world and the universe. 

And Hyde understood.

xx.

Eric was sixteen now, and he got used to his differentness. To the changes which weren’t right, which he shouldn’t have. He got used to the isolation and the hiding and the emptiness within himself and within the friends he had known his entire life. 

xx.

Eric was freshly seventeen, but he didn’t feel any different. 

But in a way, he did. 

He couldn’t grasp why, why he started to feel changes now, not when he had been fourteen and wished for changes, but his feelings were there, even if he tried to oppress them, and they took his breath away, chocked him, even, and he didn’t know why. 

Or he did. 

But he didn’t want to. 

And he couldn’t even understand it himself. It didn’t make much sense. 

But he sat here, in his basement, giving his joint to Hyde, took a gulp of his beer, and he just couldn’t take his eyes of him. 

Hyde seemed really beautiful, all of a sudden.

His hair, his curls, were teetering, his sunglasses were shoved into them recklessly, pushing them out of his face, revealing his face and his contours, and those sharp angles. His eyes were shiny, glassy, even, and tinted with thin red blood vessels, dark circles under them. Hyde looked wrecked, he looked so beautiful. His skin was grey and shining in the dull light of the small lightbulb. 

Eric couldn’t even remember what they had been talking about. He could just stare. 

And with this intense gazing at his best friend, at his childhood friend, he started to feel the changes in his stomach, in his chest, all the changes all his friends had been talking about when they were younger. He could suddenly understand what they had been talking about, what they had meant when they joked about girls. 

Eric wished he couldn’t understand. 

Because it was _wrong_. 

It wasn’t right for him to look at a boy - _at Hyde_ – like he should look at girls, like he should look at Donna, weren’t they sort of together? Weren’t they dancing around each other since kindergarten, and wasn’t everybody speculating when they would get together and when they’d be married and have children, and how many children would they have?

But he had never seen Donna like the mother of his future children. He had never seen Donna as his girlfriend, or his wife, or a _mother_. He had never seen _Donna_.

But now he saw Hyde, and Hyde was here, and so, so beautiful and sweet and wasted, smiling dumbly, showing his teeth from time to time while laughing and giggling, but still trying to remain that cool and tough and calm aura. 

And sometimes in Eric clicked, and he hated himself for this click, and he couldn’t understand why _now_ , and why _Hyde_ and why in this period of time. 

Hyde seemed to be not as wasted as he seemed, he took notice of Eric’s staring. 

“What are you doin’, checking me out or something?” It was meant as a joke, Eric knew that, Hyde had this mocking tone in his voice, but that wasn’t bad, he always used this kind of voice. Eric didn’t even know if Hyde had another one. 

“What if I were checking you out?”, Eric sputtered, regretted all these beers and the weed, his words. “Would you hate it, make fun of me, tell everybody what a fucking fag I am?”

“Why were you checking me out?” Hyde seemed to ignore the small outburst, more interested in the part of the checking-out. 

“Why wouldn’t I? You’re… I mean, you are really…” Eric couldn’t find words, couldn’t express himself, wasn’t even sure what he was doing. 

Hyde leaned back in his chair in front of the washing machine and dryer, hands on his belt, one eyebrow quirked and almost grinning lasciviously. “Have you ever done something stupid in your life, Forman?”

“We’re drinking alcohol and smoking weed and there’s school tomorrow. I think that’s pretty stupid,” maybe Hyde was even more wrecked than Eric himself, why should he overhear his mumblings and always ask the wrong questions.

“Yes, I know, but you’ve always been such a good kid, since we’ve met each other. You even let yourself be pressured in trying a shot with Donna, although you don’t even like her that way,” Hyde stood, stretched his arms, let his shoulders circle. His gaze never left Eric. “And now you’re not even living your true self, you’re hiding, you’re denying.”

“I don’t know… what are you–“ 

But Eric couldn’t finish. He couldn’t even breath for a moment. Because Hyde walked over to him, let himself fall heavily on the couch, throwing one leg over Eric’s. Hyde let his head bump against the back of the couch, his glasses slid through his hair and fell on the ground with a silent thump. He stared at Eric like he himself had done minutes before, his eyes were small and thin and dark, almost challenging. 

And Eric thought that maybe, _maybe_ , he hadn’t had to hide. Not in this moment, not in front of Steven Hyde. 

Eric slid his hands over Hyde’s arm, brushed his fingers against this soft and shiny skin, flickered his gaze down to his lips, swallowed. 

“I’m not gay,” Eric breathed, not believing his own words, not even his tone sounded convincing to himself. But Hyde just smirked, tilted his head. Hyde’s curls fell into his face. Eric wanted to brush them away. He wanted to do all sorts of things in this moment, but he couldn’t. Something stopped him from leaning over, from brushing away the strands of hair, from just being himself and let go. 

Fortunately, he didn’t have to. Because Hyde did. 

Hyde leaned over, just a bit, halting before his face. “I don’t care what you are.”

It sounded so honest, so sincere, Eric felt the heat in his cheeks, the shaking of his knees, and he told himself _Fuck it, fuck everything_ and pressed his lips against Hyde’s. It felt clumsy and a bit too hard, too harsh and almost bold, but Hyde didn’t pull back, didn’t break the kiss. In the first few moments, it felt chaste and shy. And then it wasn’t anymore. 

Hyde pushed back against his mouth, grabbed a handful of Eric’s hair, and _pulled_. Eric nearly moaned in surprise, instead, he bit down on Hyde’s lip. Hyde took that as an invitation, apparently, because he cupped Eric’s face, invaded his mouth with his tongue to explore. 

Eric had never felt anything like this before. Okay, yes, he hadn’t kissed many people in his life. There had been Donna a few times, but the kisses he had shared with her were… different. They were somehow uncomfortable, awkward, and Eric never knew if he did it right or if he were a bad kisser. He felt pressured and stressed, didn’t want to fuck everything up. Well. In the end, he did fuck it up somehow and they weren’t together after a few weeks of dancing around each other. 

Not that he didn’t like Donna. Not that he hadn’t liked to kiss her. But he never felt this… spark, the fireworks and the butterflies. 

But with Hyde? Oh, with Hyde he felt all sorts of things.

It was somehow wild and uncoordinated, all tongue and teeth, and they bit each other, sucked, licked. Their hands were everywhere, in hair, in clothes, pulling at each other. Soon, Eric was half straddling Hyde, pulling him closer and closer, kissing him harder than before. 

And then, Hyde pushed up his hips against Eric’s. Oh, that was good. More than good. 

Too good. 

“Hyde, wait for a second,” Eric breathed against Hyde’s lips, whispering so silently as if his words could break the moment, “I think I need… a moment.”

 

“Still not gay?”, Hyde grinned, out of breath as well, cheeks red and hot.

“Oh, definitely not straight. But I think I need some more validation of that assumption.”


End file.
